What concerns you most about SHO?

[Takeda Shingen]

Must have been a good game, then.

[Julhelm]

I wouldn't know, since I haven't played it. The people who follow it on facebook certainly seem to like what they see. It's not being made for you or me so whether we like it or not is of little concern.

[GoldenRivet]

i would like to point out that a number of comments at the ubi forums and on the facebook page that could be in any way construed as negative are sumarily removed by the management

Ubi is very very strict with their information and opinion control, especially pre release

[desertstriker]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

i would like to point out that a number of comments at the ubi forums and on the facebook page that could be in any way construed as negative are sumarily removed by the management

Ubi is very very strict with their information and opinion control, especially pre release

yeah they banned me from the SHO facebook

[Vince82]

So Ubi are communists after all?

I better not post this on facebook, hehe.

[himmelreiter]

Originally Posted by Julhelm

I wouldn't know, since I haven't played it. The people who follow it on facebook certainly seem to like what they see. It's not being made for you or me so whether we like it or not is of little concern.

I don't give a penny on FB based opinions anyway, but you made the point: judge it after you played! And: Judge it with the right expectations in mind. This is not a submarine hardcore simulation like SH3 + mods. I'm testing closed beta since February and know it very well. IMHO it is just a SH related online game which simple missions can be played in half an hour at home time. But you can also choose a heavy escorted convoy and enjoy a multi play of a few hours chatting with the community. Just for fun, nothing serious.

[B_O_L_T]

All the negativity and ignorance on f2p is a sad indictment of this community; it is the largest growing sector of the gaming market along with the increase in games for portable devices.

I too have been here since the start, my first exposure to computer gaming was playing tic tac toe using punched cards on the mainframe at my father’s workplace. My first personal computer, the zx80 kit I purchased and built back in 1980, and my first naval game, Gato on the Apple. However, it would seem unlike a large proportion of this community, I have also actively played a number of free to play titles and invested money in those I found interesting, and realise the value and exposure these sorts of titles bring to the table.

As I said in another thread, every sub simmer should be hoping SHO does well; without games like SHO increasing exposure of the genre to new generations of gamers, no developer will be willing to invest time or money into more serious titles. For good and bad, UBI has been the only developer willing to invest and take a risk on the genre for a very long time. Without continued interest, the efforts of communities like subsim will be for naught, and the genre could well disappear altogether.

Even if you have no interest in SHO at all; if you have any interest in the continued presence of sub sims in the market the last thing you should be doing is posting negative comments about the game. As they used to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all; and it happens to be sound advice.

[desertstriker]

Originally Posted by B_O_L_T

All the negativity and ignorance on f2p is a sad indictment of this community; it is the largest growing sector of the gaming market along with the increase in games for portable devices.

I too have been here since the start, my first exposure to computer gaming was playing tic tac toe using punched cards on the mainframe at my father’s workplace. My first personal computer, the zx80 kit I purchased and built back in 1980, and my first naval game, Gato on the Apple. However, it would seem unlike a large proportion of this community, I have also actively played a number of free to play titles and invested money in those I found interesting, and realize the value and exposure these sorts of titles bring to the table.

As I said in another thread, every sub simmer should be hoping SHO does well; without games like SHO increasing exposure of the genre to new generations of gamers, no developer will be willing to invest time or money into more serious titles. For good and bad, UBI has been the only developer willing to invest and take a risk on the genre for a very long time. Without continued interest, the efforts of communities like subsim will be for naught, and the genre could well disappear altogether.

Even if you have no interest in SHO at all; if you have any interest in the continued presence of sub sims in the market the last thing you should be doing is posting negative comments about the game. As they used to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all; and it happens to be sound advice.

its not that we don't respect f2p its just that ubi is doing it and has made increasingly bad subsims, and if patterns hold true SHO will be buggy beyond buggy (and we have no proof this is not the case).
now while ubi is the only corporation to make a subsim for a while they have increasingly spat on the consumer by releasing unfinished games and leaving it to our hard working modders to fix their SNAFU. now they have made it so not even our modders will be able to fix SHO.

I think most are just being pessimistically optimistic about SHO and retain some hope. however this game could also be final rivet in the Iron coffin for the genre if it doesn't pan out

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by B_O_L_T

All the negativity and ignorance on f2p is a sad indictment of this community; it is the largest growing sector of the gaming market along with the increase in games for portable devices.

I have to disagree. I don't think it reflects badly on this community at all. For the most part the Subsim community are just that - people who want a decent submarine simulator. We disagree on what that is, but we pretty much agree on what we don't want, which is a pretty game that tries to be everything to everybody. That F2P is the "largest growing sector of the gaming market" reflects not on simulation buffs, but on the kids who don't want to think about simulations or history, or to think at all, but just want to blow stuff up and be dazzled by pretty pictures.

I have also actively played a number of free to play titles and invested money in those I found interesting, and realise the value and exposure these sorts of titles bring to the table.

There is nothing wrong with that, just as there is nothing wrong with any kind of gaming. A great many members here play a great many different types of games. A testimonial to that is the General Games forum. Part of the problem is that some of us just want a good simulation. First, F2P doesn't seem to lend itself to that, and second, as has been pointed out, Ubisoft has a steadily declining reputation where the subsim is concerned. I'm looking forward to having a computer that will play Rise Of Flight, but single in-the-cockpit flight sims lend themselves well to multiplayer, whereas being the captain of a submarine does not.

As I said in another thread, every sub simmer should be hoping SHO does well; without games like SHO increasing exposure of the genre to new generations of gamers, no developer will be willing to invest time or money into more serious titles.

I am hoping it does well. That doesn't mean what they are offering holds any attraction for me. As I said, I will give it a shot, but their chances of getting any money from me are nil.

For good and bad, UBI has been the only developer willing to invest and take a risk on the genre for a very long time. Without continued interest, the efforts of communities like subsim will be for naught, and the genre could well disappear altogether.

That's the problem: It has been increasingly "for bad". Ubi tries, insisting on what they think we want, but not listening when we tell them what we want and what we don't want, and then when it fails they blame us or they blame "the market". We'll see how it goes this time.

Even if you have no interest in SHO at all; if you have any interest in the continued presence of sub sims in the market the last thing you should be doing is posting negative comments about the game. As they used to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all; and it happens to be sound advice.

Not in this case. The whole purpose of a forum is for people to say what they think. Ubi didn't listen to us before; what makes you think they care what we think now.

I puchased SH3 before I had a computer that would run it. When SH4 was released some said they would wait and read the reviews before they would give Ubi their money. I bought it sight unseen (I was homeless at the time and couldn't play anything at all) and said "We owe it to the community to support subsims." When SH5 came out I said the same thing, but when they announced the "online only" DRM scheme I refused to give them my money until I could play it offline. Otherwise I would have supported it sight unseen, just like before.

Now I've finally joined the naysayers. Ubisoft gets nothing from me until they prove themselves. This doesn't reflect badly on me, or on the community. It reflects badly on a company that has steadfastly refused to listen to what this community says, and continuously blames us for their failures. As for SHO? We'll see.

[Vince82]

realise the value and exposure these sorts of titles bring to the table.

As I said in another thread, every sub simmer should be hoping SHO does well; without games like SHO increasing exposure of the genre to new generations of gamers, no developer will be willing to invest time or money into more serious titles. For good and bad, UBI has been the only developer willing to invest and take a risk on the genre for a very long time.

Well said.

As I said, I will give it a shot, but their chances of getting any money from me are nil.

They don't need your money, but would love it if you would try the game. Myself, they are probably also not getting any money out of me as I don't really use a credit card or anything else.

The whole purpose of a forum is for people to say what they think.

[xerxes313]

A good friend of mine Charles Thompson worked for blizzard on WoW during its initial launch and up to the used second expansion,and we used to talk about how much work was involved with it.

I remember he use to talk about the 100+ hour work weeks on bug fixes and adding new quests and balancing that was released every tuesday in server maintenence. I dont know how many people blizz had or is now working but that is a lot of payroll and overtime to pay employees.

I doubt highly that ubi would have such a large team working on SHO but I understand the need for an MMO to have a subscribtion model and why games like Guild Wars and SWTOR need some sort of cash flow to help with servers and such.

Just my 2cents.

[Seeadler]

Originally Posted by xerxes313

I doubt highly that ubi would have such a large team working on SHO

About 20-25 programmers in Vienna (Austria) and 15 for server administration, user support, QA, community management etc. in Dusseldorf (Germany)

[desertstriker]

Originally Posted by Seeadler

About 20-25 programmers in Vienna (Austria) and 15 for server administration, user support, QA, community management etc. in Dusseldorf (Germany)

25 for programing is a decent amount but certainly not a whole lot. as for 15 for server admin ect is hardly a number worth mentioning. the college I go to has that number and that is for 41k students

[CaliEs]

[Rockin Robbins]

Nice video. Useless but nice. A bit entertaining cheap shot. Maybe appropriate for SHO, I don't know.

But the fact is that something has to break us out of our present paradigm of video game development. Now it works something like this. You are an executive for a large, faceless and inhuman game company called Ubi. You get a wild hair somewhere we'd rather not talk about and it's time to make a subsim. So you get a team of programmers together who aren't particularly interested in submarines, simulation, realism or whatever (they worked on Borderlands last week) and give them a fixed budget and a certain but certainly inadequate length of time. Whatever they turn out in that not-long-enough time will hit the market. So they work for several months, the code is frozen the DVDs are stamped and the game hits the street. Then the developers are let go, fired, cashed in the project is over. Simultaneously the game company gushes about how they have a breakthrough simulation, promise bug fixes and upgraded content that will never happen. For two or three months people buy the product and then the well runs dry and the money stops flowing in.

At this point, what's in it for the game company to fix bugs? That's an expense and they're in business to obtain income. It just isn't going to happen. You want additional content? They have to hire a new dev team who know nothing about the product they are "enhancing." The old team didn't document their code because they knew they were producing.......wait for it.......a drink coaster. It doesn't matter what stuff is stamped in it, the real product is a drink coaster that looks kinda like a DVD.

It's a year later and the game company says it's time for a new version. Do we get continuity, a building on the knowledge of the past to produce a better quality product? That's impossible. The first dev team is toast, they didn't document anyway and they're all working on Farmville 2. These new guys are gonna have to reinvent the wheel. Inevitably they steal what they think they can work with from the first game even though they don't understand how it works at all. So they inherit many of the old game's bugs. Then they invent a whole new bundle of bugs of their own. Does it take Stephen Hawking to tell you that the second game, produced with lower budget in a shorter time by lesser programmers will be worse? Do we really expect progress? Or do we sadly laugh?

The drink coaster paradigm of game production is okay for casual games, but for games of depth that deign to call themselves simulation, we're at the end of the road. We can get a different simulator every year. We cannot get a better simulator every year. That need synergy. It needs continuity with the same people working together on the same project over a period of years. If they're going to do that they are going to have to be paid. If they're going to be paid, we are going to have to provide the money.

You can see where I'm going. Subscription games are absolutely necessary and unavoidable if simulation, not just submarine simulation, is going to show any progress over the present state.

I hate the pay to win strategy of "free" on-line games. That's playing your customers for patsies. We deserve better than that. Everyone should have access to the entire game. No selling submarines, torpedoes, virtual toilet paper or other smarmy practices that tell the customer he isn't respected at all. That leaves us with a monthly subscription price.

And the OP has it perfectly. How much are we paying now? If SH has a game a year for $60 that's $60 per year that we already pay. In effect, we already subscribe for a guarantee of the same old thing. What if you were offered a $5.00 per month subscription to Silent Hunter (no more versions!) that would continue to evolve for years. What if this game were a download content game, you'd download the game but play it locally on your computer. What if you got real, meaningful monthly upgrades that vaporized bugs, brought in new content that you cared about, a great on-line community where game developers would actively sound out the players for their input and actually follow up on it? What if there were optional on-line server-based multiplayer scenarios like there are for countless first person shooters today. Individual players have their own local copies of the games. They can interact with others or play the game single player.

Now $5.00 a month is $60 per year, the same as you pay now to be insulted. Wouldn't you pay that to be valued? Wouldn't you pay that for your game to actually improve over time instead of just be abandoned and all the programmers fired? Is that worthy of this cheap shot video?

SH3 and SH4 are great. But they are full of problems and unfulfilled possibilities. They've done little more than whet my appetite for what could be. I'm not willing to pay for more of the same old drink coaster dance, especially pay in advance. SHO isn't what I'm looking for--I'm not looking for a strictly casual game--but it is a move outside the drink coaster mindset. I'll watch with interest!